Cuba with nothing but the Fujifilm X100F

Havana

It has been a long winter and an even longer wait for this vacation which my wife and I had booked back in July of 2017.

A sixteen day holiday split in two parts. Part I was a round trip through Cuba with stops in Havana, Viñales, Cienfuegos and Trinidad.

The second part was a round trip in Mexico. I will come back to that in a second blog post as it would be far too much to write about in just one post.

Let´s start with Cuba. After a pretty long flight from Frankfurt to Havana we arrived at the airport, collected our luggage and headed straight to the hotel. By the time we arrived it was 9pm and we went to bed without doing much at all.

After a really good night´s sleep it was time to hit the streets of Havana. First stop was the Havana Club museum to see how the famous Cuban rum is produced. That was pretty interesting but a little touristy. None the less I did learn something.

Our tour guide took us right into the heart of Havana where we started the late morning with one of the most delicious Mojito I have ever tasted. And yes even at 11 am a Mojito is a good idea.

Mojito

The Bartender

People, buildings, the wonderful colors and of course the vintage cars are just so photogenic.

My first impression of Havana: This is a photographers Mecca.

After a great lunch in a local restaurant it was time for a ride in on of Cuba’s vintage taxis. Our driver Fidel and as he stated “My name is Fidel, but not Castro” was a real Havana guy. In is best Spanish he told us all about the city of Havana and the monuments we were passing. And no I don’t really speak Spanish but did manage to understand the one or the other he was talking about. Not to myself – learn Spanish.

Fidel, not Castro

In the evening it was time for a dinner, a Cubata which in Cuba is a Cuba Libre with the seven year Havana Club rum. Delicious I tell you.

The first day passed far too fast and I had the impression that I could have taken even more pictures. But quantity is not everything.

On day two we got into our small bus and drove to the Valley of Viñales. What a difference to Havana.

Viñales

Viñales is a small town on the western part of the island and right in the mountains of Cuba and therefore very different to what you would expect the country to be like. I did not take many pictures in the city, just a few street snaps. The highlight was a dinner at a restaurant called Balcon del Valle with a magnificent view over the valley of Viñales!

Valley of Viñales

Sunset over the Valley of Viñales

The last light Viñales

I think this will be it for part one of the Cuba travel. It might be better to split the vacation up into several blog posts as I fear it will all be too much to read and there will be too many pictures. Talking about the pictures. These are all untouched Jpegs OOC which I developed using the FUJIFILM X RAW STUDIO raw converter. The one ore the other might slightly be tweaked in Lightroom CC. Nothing more than push or pulling the hightlights and shadows and adding a vignette.

Be sure to come back and read more about the day in Cienfuegos and of course the Unesco world heritage city of Trinidad.

My thoughts on “The Man” photo is that the puddle does nothing for the photo, a better composition would have the camera raised up to get more of the doorway behind the man. I was also thinking the same about “Puddlegram Dog”. It looks like raising the camera to see the building in the background has more to offer than the reflection in the puddle.

Thanks very much for taking the time and your thoughts on the two photographs you mentioned.
I personally actually like them just as they are but will consider a different angle next time.
As you can imagine time is the limiting factor when photographing street scenes and you mostly only have one opportunity to take the shot.